iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by MarxMustermann

Plabs @plabs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Of Mice & Mechs @marxmustermann.bsky.social "Survive in a dead world. Fight, scavenge and rebuild until you control a base and its workers. Collect all 7 glass hearts and claim the throne." store.steampowered.com/app/4564040/...

store.steampowered.com

OfMiceAndMechs on Steam

Survive in a dead world. Fight, scavenge and rebuild until you control a base and its workers. Collect all 7 glass hearts and claim the throne.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Please give me you opinion on the new capsule text for my game: "Enjoy a combination of traditional roguelike, base builder and factory builder. You explore a broken and hostile world RPG-style, but you are also the boss of a crewed base. Fight, manage workers ...

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Here is more music wattmo made for my game. I use that loop in a single place in the endgame dungeon (glassed city). I also used the music as background music in my gamedev stream and noticed an increase in viewership ^^ www.youtube.com/watch?v=33-q... #games #music #indiedev #ambient #indie

youtube.com

Wattmo - Reach (From "Of Mice And Mechs")

YouTube video by Wattmo

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

To reduce user confusion, the game now shows the most basic interaction keys as a message next to the player. This happens once, when such an action makes sense. I hope this will help especially in the early minutes of the gameplay. #games #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #ui #game

a screenshot of a game showing the text "press h to chat" bellow the player character

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I got a music donation for my game :-) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gllg... It is made by wattmo and a new take on the games main theme. I like it a lot. Contact wattmo, if you need music for your project as well: www.reddit.com/r/INAT/comme... #gamedev #music #indiegame #games #creepy #indiedev

youtube.com

Wattmo - Lamoa (from "Of Mice And Mechs")

YouTube video by Wattmo

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I added a new feature to my game: You now can talk to the NPC directly and change their work priorities. Changing the work priorities has been in the game for quite some while, but it was only done in a huge matrix for all NPCs at once before. #gaming #gamedev #ui #basebuilder #ASCIIgame #game

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Playing my game yesterday i was bringing an inventory full of loot back to my base and saw one of my NPCs strolling by. That gave me an idea and you now can stuff your items into your allies inventory and they will put them into storage. #gaming #games #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

After some work on the steam capsule, there now is main design and i got several colors to choose from. What color do you like best? Any feedback on the capsule design itself would also be appreciated. #indiegame #indiedev #gaming #gamedev #capsule #logo #steam

9 versions of the capsule with different font colors

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I'm adding text highlights in my game currently. The idea is to highlight the most important parts of a dialog or menu with a yellow color and to somewhat hide non important parts with a grey. #gamedev #gaming #games #indiedev #indiegame #UI #screenshotsaturday

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Today i'll bring my game to a physical play testing event in germny/bavaria/Fürth. It is called pizza playtest @pizza-playtest-mfr.bsky.social and it has been pretty nice and productive so far. So come and test if you are nearby :-) #fürth #fuert #Nuernberg #Erlangen #pizza #gamedev #playtesting

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I'm doing a lot of twitch streams lately. So visit me there if you want to me gamedev. www.twitch.tv/marxmusterma... I'm currently streaming all my dev activity. #twitch #streaming #gamedev #devstream

twitch.tv

marxMustermann_ - Live on Twitch

gamedev - OfMiceAndMechs - coding playtesting bugfixing :-) - ep23 | Streaming software and game development.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

i'll be at a playtesting event again today: events.games-bavaria.com/event/%F0%9F... The event is organized by @pizza-playtest-mfr.bsky.social So thanks a lot for the effort of organizing it! (and the pizza obviously) I get that this is a bit too much of a short notice to drop by, though.

events.games-bavaria.com

🍕 Pizza Playtest Mittelfranken | April - Games/Bavaria Events

Hallo liebe Gamedevs und Pizzafreunde! Ab sofort gibt es den Pizza Playtest auch in Mittelfranken! Wir laden euch ein, beim Pizza Playtest eure Spiele(-prototypen) von anderen Teilnehmer:innen ausgie...

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I got invited to a showcasing event on youtube. I basically can record 3 minutes of whatever i want to showcase my game and the channel will show it. That means i now need to build that 3 minute video, but that will be an ideal preparation for an actual trailer. #gamedev #indiedev #marketing

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

The Scrap piles in my game got tiles now 🙂 So far they have been ASCII only so far. I thnk it is now way easier to see what parts of the scrap fields are walkable and what parts are not. An outline gets added during runtime #gaming #indiegame #gamedev #indiedev #game #games #art

A comparison of tile based scrap to the left and ASCII based scrap to the right

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Based on feedback i added a cooldown to the implant. The implant is basically the tutorial function in the game, that explains how things work and are interacted with. I'm really not sur, if that is a good idea or if i'll keep it. Feedback welcome. #gamedev #indiedev #gamedesign

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

I started experimenting around with tile based edering for my game. I'm not sure about what style i'll choose and if i'll keep moving forward with it. Also some things are a bit to bright now. #gamedev #indie #indiedev #gaming #opensource

a screenshof of my game showing tile based rendering of the starter base

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Naming stuff is stupid sometimes: In the tutorial mausoleum there only available weapons are simple metal Rods. I now want to teach the player how to upgrade items arrived at the name: RodHardener Somehow i feel that item wont be taken seriously... #gamedev #indiedev #gaming #indiegame

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

I darkened down the walls in my game a lot. It was requested by a bunch of people, because you should keep the unimportant thing dark and the important things bright. I think it works quite well. The attention gets drawn to the rooms content now. #gaming #gamedev #roguelikedev #games #indiedev

3 variants of how the walls are rendered 1.) bright. 2.) darkened 3.) darkened with removed background.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

I got interviewed about my game "OfMiceAndMechs" and the video is available now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXFF... Check it out! I basically recommend checking out the whole series! #gamedev #roguelikedev #youtube #itch_io #gaming #interview #indiegames #indiedev #indygame

youtube.com

Interview with MarxMustermann – Developer of Of Mice And Mechs

YouTube video by Eddy Games

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

I got interviewed by a small youtube channel about OfMiceAndMechs yesterday! The channel does a series called "Indie Neighbor" and looks for game devs that publish games on itch.io The recruiting post on reddit: www.reddit.com/r/itchio/com... #gamedev #indie #indiedev #itchio #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I released a new version of OfMiceAndMechs with tile based rendering as default. After adding the ability to change the rendering menu i felt confident enough to update the itch page with the new version: marxmustermann.itch.io/ofmiceandmec... #gaming #gamedev #itch_io #ASCII

marxmustermann.itch.io

Tile based mode released

OfMiceAndMech now has a new look! Now the game has full support for tiles and i'll be slowly adding them in. Not everything has a tile yet, but the support for it is in the game itself now and is acti...

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Today a testplay failed, because the game didn't run on the testers device. After some debugging (thx) it turned out that very important parts of the downloaded zip were missing. I'm not sure if the tester deleted the files or an antivirus deleted them for some reason. #gamedev #steam #itch_io

a screenshot showing the zip with and without the missing files

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

I further tweaked my games UI: Since enemies were hard to spot sometime, now characters have an indicator on them showing that they are characters. The character indicators are the litte red triangles on the "st". For allies that triangles are blue. #gamedev #roguelikedev #uidesign #gaming

A room showing some enemies with the red enemy markers

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

I tweaked how menues are shown based on feedback i got. As requested i made the background fade out a bit, when a menu is open and made the menu border more greyish. The idea is that the stuff the player should is the brightest thing drawing focus towards it. #gamedev #roguelikedev #ui #uidesign

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

On my journey to support more fancy visuals from ASCII, i started a new step: I started to put the ASCII into boxes for big items. That is easy and should signal that the item cannot be walked through. It should also show that the two letters are one item. #gamedev #gaming #roguelikedev #ascii

A comparison of a room rendering with letters shown in squares and pure ASCII

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

How much of an obvious hint is the decscription on the Memorial Monolithz in my game? It is placed in from of the exploding room the player starts in without memory. #gaming #gamedev #roguelikedev #story

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

I'm still working on building tiles to highlight specific elements in my ASCII game. The newest is a MemorialMonolith which only has the function hold story text. It also is ment to draw attention and look fancy. So it got a multicolored tile. #roguelikedev #gamedev #art

a screenshot of a room with a tile based memorial monolith in it

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

The new test build for my game is out! It includes the new start. The start is a lot less stressful and deadly The game now starts you in the mausoleum Download: github.com/MarxMusterma... #gamedev #roguelikedev #gameing #testing

github.com

Release Testing-15b95f4 · MarxMustermann/OfMiceAndMechs

Full Changelog: Release-88f2c84...Testing-15b95f4

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

The starting area in my game is intended to show the player how the machines and NPCs work. It will be skinned as mausoleum/museum. Basically there is a sequence of exhibition rooms with some machines and an NPC that will work in that room. #roguelikedev #gaming #gamedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

After way too much time i converted the gameslot management to the selection based system. While doing this, i renamed the gameslots to world, because i aim to support muliple saves per world later. #gamedev #gaming #rgoulikedev #UIdesign #UI

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

I now have a transition from the clean mausoleum state to the messed up state. The point of it is, that players have an easier time seeing how the setup looks, but still have it messed up later. The NPCs you can spawn will mostly clean it up again. #gamedev #roguelikedev #gaming

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I added a bunch of decoration in the starting area. The idea is now that the starting area is a mausoleum/museum. So the room will show typical production lines of the game exhibition style. Like a room for scrap processing, manufacturing, food processing etc ... #roguelikedev #gamedev #gaming

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Enjoy this video of a NPC cleaning up the scrap storage room. In the starting area you can wake some clones and one of the duties they'll do is putting the scrap in the storage room back into the stockpiles :-) #gamedev #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I changed my games main menu from a keypress based UI pattern to a selection based Ui pattern. The change is not fully done yet, but it feels like it introduces some very early friction, but fear it might reduces nerdyness a bit. #gamedev #UIdesign #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Since i'm looking for testers on the new start scenario in my game, i set up my CI to produce binaries for test builds now. The testing builds can be found here: github.com/MarxMusterma... Since they are automatically generated, the builds get updated often. #gamedev #testing #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I completed the basic flow of the new start: 1. leave a burning room 2. fight an enemy 3. craft a weapon 4. spawn a worker 5. fight more enemies 6. teleport to current starter base #gamedev #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

A closer look at the manufacturing animation. I think that adds a lot of cuteness to the game and i think will have to add animations like this to all production processes 🙂 #gamedev #roguelikedev #cute

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Another sneakpeak int the new start of my game: The player can now spawn a woker NPC basically right at the start of the game. The worker then runs around and does some tasks to show the player that the basebuilding component with workers exists. #gamedev #storytelling #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I added more visual hinting. Now several important items are yellow. Since a testplayer had trouble finding the DutyArtwork (DA) in the game i needed to tweak that. The player knew the item exited and used it already, but because of mental overload he didn't find it on the map. #gamedev #UI

A screenshot showing the a room with all white items and the same room with highlighted items

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I just sold the first copy of my game! This will be the last meta post for a while, but it is one of the big milestones in the live of a gamedev. disclaimer: The game is not done, the demo is not yet done and i created an itchio page to find playtesters. #gamedev #celebration #itch #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Update on my itchio cover: It works great! it went from 0.34% percent of people clicking on the game for the first 1387 impressions to 4% for the 300 after swapping the cover out. I got positive feedback by actual people in comments as well. #gamedev #marketing #roguelikedev

the cover image for the game of mice and mechs

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Here is a sneak peak into the new story start. This is among the first things the players will see. The room in the middle has the player (golden @) in it and will serve as a hub room and give the player some space. #gamedev #roguelikedev

a screenshot of the map the player starts in

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Reminder to my fellow gamedevs: Fill out your profiles. I posted about my new itch cover image and that got some people pretty interested. People checked my profile and found ... nothing -_- So they actually had to go to ask me for a link or google it themselves. #gamedev #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

I updated my itchio cover for my game, because the click trough rate (ctr) was 0.36%. That means that 1387 people were shown my game in a list of games and only 5 people clicked. The players at that point only see the cover image, the name and one sentence. #gamedev #itch_io #coverdesign

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

I'm reworking the initial 5 minutes of my game again. Since i got feedback that the pacing of my game is wrong. Too fast in the beginning and too slow later. The players also took way longer to complete the first section and often only saw one out of three main mechanics. #gamedev #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

The menus in my game support tiles now 🙂 That means the tech base is set up for full tile support in OfMiceAndMechs. Some minor things are missing, but it is good enough to activate it for all players who want it. #gamedev #roguelikedev #gameart

A screenshot with several menus open showing that tiles work in menus

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

What version of my weird machinery do you like best? It does not have a real purpose other than being mysterious and filling the room. I'm trying to find an artstyle that is not just ASCII, but no actual pictures either. #gamedev #art #feedback #roguelikedev

a room shown in 6 visual variants numbered from 1 to 6

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Today i got the second streamer to playtest 🙂 Both are small streamers that do playtests as content and offer advice etc. Those people are really helpful and take requests, so i'll plug them here: www.twitch.tv/twentysevenxl/ (no vod yet) www.twitch.tv/videos/27061... at 1:45 #gamedev #twitch

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